Meanings
plural cuppas · alternative cupper
- AustraliaIrelandNew ZealandUKcolloquialA cup of tea (or sometimes any hot drink).
I’ve just put the kettle on – fancy a cuppa?
4 more examples
[…] we covered the hundred yards to the lawn where the tea table awaited us. […] Only Bobbie was present when we arrived at the trough. Wilbert and Phyllis were presumably still in the leafy glade, and Mrs Cream, Bobbie said, worked in her room every afternoon on her new spine-freezer and seldom knocked off for a cuppa.
1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter III1992, Machine Knitting Monthly, Maidenhead: Machine Knitting Monthly Ltd., Back home safely, I made a cuppa and sat for a good hour revelling in my favourite magazine.
‘Here,’ said Clancy as he sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the bed, ‘You sit down and take it easy. I′ll boil the billy for a cuppa’.
2007, Kevin Hallewell, Woop Woop, page 352017 Mrs. S. "Guillotines Decide" Orphan Black Get Kira up. I'll pour you a cuppa.
- AustraliaIrelandNew ZealandUKcolloquialWhatever interests or suits one; one's cup of tea.
Similes were not my cuppa, anyway. My classmates tended to overload their writing with them (all-time record: six in one paragraph) and they stuck out like violins in a rock tune.
2001, Gabrielle Bauer, Waltzing the Tango: Confessions of an Out-of-step Boomer, page 210 - pronunciation spellingPronunciation spelling of cup of.
“That′s a new line, isn′t it? Come up to my suite for a cuppa coffee.”
2008, Frank Deford, The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball, page 2042 more examples
I just felt like I wanted another cuppa coffee and I told her so;[…]and before I could get just one more cuppa coffee it was seven-fifty!
1915, Sinclair Lewis, edited by Anthony Di Renzo, Commutation: $9.17: If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis, published 1997And he orders a cuppa cawfee. “A cuppa cawfee and what else?” I says to him.
1940, The New Yorker, Volume 16, Part 1, page 22
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Contraction of cup of (with “tea” or sometimes “coffee” implied). See also a (“of”), pinta (“pint of milk”).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
cuppa. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cuppa
“cuppa.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cuppa. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cuppa,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cuppa.
Source: cuppa on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.